


Crucible

by taichara



Category: Xenogears
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 02:48:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3158375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taichara/pseuds/taichara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If the ground-born Lamb is going to make good of himself and his abilities in Solaris, then he needs to be able to actually function -- which means purging the lab's drugs out of Sigrd's system.</p>
<p>That may be easier said than done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crucible

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: _Xenogears, Sigurd and Ramsus, the drugs are torture and the withdrawal is worse_

At first he'd been relieved to no longer hear screaming.

The near-silence -- broken only the faintest of sounds, laboured breaths and feeble cries -- had been a blessed change from Sigrd's crazed howls, well mixed with guttural curses in some groundling language (was it Avik?) and broken Solarian pleading. But now, now ...

Now, looking down at the limp ragdoll collapsed, slick with sweat, across the bed, Ramsus would have given everything he had to hear those screams.

_You look so quiet. It's a lie._

_This isn't the end, I know it isn't. You just can't fight any longer. There's nothing left._

Nothing left in Sigrd's ravaged self to throw himself against the door, hammering fists until blood-bruised welts lined his hands; to thrash against the makeshift restraints Jessiah had lashed to the bed in a fit of desperate ingenuity. What the damned chemical cocktail hadn't burned out of him, the purging certainly was working on --

_I need to clean him up, at least._

_... Don't leave me like this, damnit --_

Quickly, Ramsus cracked the door open a sliver and found himself immediately staring at Jesse's weary face. A few murmured words and a trip down the hall later and the door was closed again, Ramsus approaching the bed and its occupant with a basin of water, washcloths and a dose of stubbornness mixed with guilt.

_I'm not letting you lose this easily._

"... It's me. Just so you know. So, just have a little more patience ..."

Cloth into basin, then wring it out; then pressed against burning copper flesh -- try to ignore the crawling twitch of muscles that could do nothing else to express the agony of contact, try to ignore the shuddering intake of breath, the fluttering of pale lashes over the dead blue eyes ...

-*-

Flayed, he felt flayed, like a whip-crack across his skin; like a thousand sun-hot coils of acid drawn across his muscles, under the flesh. Like a white-hot flame, unending, as the world turned inside out.

Or rather, he would, if he were aware of the world at all. But that luxury Sigrd had lost ... he didn't know when, could no longer think of 'when' or 'time' or any other thing. There was only agony and need, when it wasn't an empty blackness that was absolute.

Exhausted, spent, unable to -- unwilling to -- fight as the mother of all desert storms scoured him to the bone, he waited for the end ...

... and instead was overtaken by a wave of guilt, of concern, of stubborn pride, that lanced into his awareness like that white flame forged into a knife plunged into his very soul. His skull threatened to split, he wanted to deny this thing 

_how do i know what you_

\-- but there was no escape, not from the flame inside his mind and not from the acid in his veins ...

-*-

"Fight, damn you."

There'd been one tiny sound, a faint and terrified cry somewhere down deep, and Ramsus found himself needing to pause and collect his own wits before he struck in agonized frustration. 

That was the last, the absolute last, thing he needed to do.

He basin and cloths aside, pulled sweat-soaked hair from Sigrd's face, leaned in close to lock blue-glass unresponsive eyes with his own.

" _Fight_ it, or they win. Do it."

"Did you try escaping that often to lose to _this_?  
"Do it, damn you --"

One more cycle -- if he made it through just one more cycle ...


End file.
